Praise for Nikki Logan

‘Superb debut. 4.5 Stars.’

—RT Book Reviews on

Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss

‘Now, here is an Australian writer who manages both to

tell a good story and to capture Australia well. I had fun

from start to finish. Nikki Logan will be one to watch.’

—www.goodreads.com on

Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss

‘This story has well-defined and soundly motivated

characters as well as a heart-wrenching conflict.’

—RT Book Reviews on

Their Newborn Gift

About the Author
About Nikki Logan

NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

Also by Nikki Logan

Rapunzel in New York

A Kiss to Seal the Deal

Shipwrecked with Mr Wrong

Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss

Their Newborn Gift

Seven-Day Love Story

The Soldier’s Untamed Heart

Friends to Forever

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Mr Right at the Wrong Time

Nikki Logan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

THE droning whine might have been coming from the tyres spinning in defiance of the absence of a solid surface beneath their tread, or from the still cooling engine, or from the air hissing from the deflating airbags.

Or quite possibly from deep inside Aimee Leigh’s tight throat.

The brace of the steering wheel against her chest really didn’t allow for much more than a whimper, followed rapidly by a shallow, painful breath, but making noise seemed like a priority because somewhere down deep Aimee knew that if she was making noise then she was still breathing. And if she was still breathing then she had something to save.

A life.

No matter how pathetic.

Adrenaline surged through her body as she flicked her eyes desperately left and right. It was pitch-black outside, except for a lone shaft of moonlight which fractured into a hundred different facets in the shattered windscreen of her little Honda. Long lengths of her hair brushed forward across her cheeks, defying gravity. She shook them just slightly, they swung in the open air, and the press of the steering wheel into her chest finally made some sense.

It wasn’t pressing into her. She was pressing into it.

Down onto it.

Her world righted itself as she re-orientated and spidered her free hand along her middle to the pain in her abdomen—and discovered the seatbelt carving into her belly, straining against her weight, holding her in her seat.

Saving her life.

The moment she acknowledged it, its ruthless grip became unbearable. Her trembling fingers found the long cross length that was supposed to brace her from hip to shoulder—that had been until the force of the accident had pulled her free of it—and, forcing panic back, she squeezed her free arm up behind her and found the place where the seatbelt locked against its hidden reel. She curled her sticky fingers around it, got a good purchase, took as deep a breath as she could manage …

…and then she pulled.

Her whole body screamed as she forced her torso behind the fabric restraint and pressed herself back into the driver’s seat. The release of pressure on her abdomen allowed a rush of blood into the lower half of her body, and it was only then that she realised she’d not been able to feel anything down there before. At all.

The painful burn of sensation returning kept her focused, and as she hung suspended at the waist and chest by her strong seatbelt she audited her extremities, made sure everything responded. But when she tried to flex her right foot an excruciating pain ripped up her leg and burst out into the night.

A bird exploded from its treetop roost just outside her shattered window, and as she slipped back into unconsciousness the urgent flap of its wings morphed in Aimee’s addled mind into the hover of an angel.

A heavenly soul that had come to earth to act as midwife between her life … and her death.

CHAPTER ONE

‘HELLO?’

The darkness was the same whether her eyes were open or closed so she didn’t bother trying.

The disembodied voice that floated down to her made Aimee wonder if maybe she was dead, and she and her car and the tree she’d hit when she flew off the A 10 had all been transported together in a tangled, inseparable mess into a void.

Some kind of spiritual waiting room.

Her heart battered against the seatbelt that still pinned her to the seat like an astronaut strapped into a shuttle.

Starved of light, her imagination lurched into overdrive. She replayed the slide and crash in her mind, each time making it worse and more violent. One minute she’d been travelling happily along through the towering eucalypts that defied gravity, growing forty-five degrees up out of the Tasmanian mountain all the way to the horizon …

… the next she’d been sliding and briefly airborne, before slamming into the trunk of this tree.

‘Hello?’

Her head twitched slightly. Maybe her heavenly number was being called? She prised open her crusted, swollen lids and stared into the darkness that still reigned.

It didn’t seem necessary to reply. Surely in the spirit world it would be enough just to think your response?

Yes. I’m here …

She reluctantly released her death-grip on her seatbelt and risked extending trembling fingers out into the dense nothing around her. They grazed against something solid almost immediately, and she traced them across the crusty, papery surface of bark, rolling tiny unbreakable cubes beneath her fingertips like reading Braille.

A tree branch. Riddled with pieces of her shattered windscreen.

She fumbled her touch to the roof of the car, found the interior light and—with only a momentary thought for what might be revealed—depressed the plastic panel and squinted at the sudden dim light.

Her dash had slipped forward about a foot, and buckled where parts of the engine had pushed into it. The roof above her had crushed downwards. But, most terrifying of all, an enormous tree limb had pierced the armour of her little car, through the windscreen and the passenger seat beyond it, and was taking much of the vehicle’s weight. Aimee stared at the carnage and tasted the slide of salt down the back of her throat.

If that branch had come through just two feet closer …

The panic she’d been holding at bay so well these past hours surged forth. She plunged the car back into darkness, thicker and more cloying than before, and let the tears come. Crying felt good—it helped—and she let herself indulge because no one was around to see it. She’d never in her life cried in front of someone else, no matter the incentive, but what she did in the privacy of her own car wreck was her business.

‘Can you hear me?’

The words just wouldn’t quite soak into her overwhelmed, muddled mind, but the voice sounded angelic enough—deep and rich and … concerned. Shouldn’t it be serene? Wasn’t its job to reassure her? To set her mind and fears at rest and guide her to … wherever she was going? Glowing and transcendent and full of love.

‘Make any kind of noise if you can hear me.’

A solitary beam of light criss-crossed back and forth from high above her, mother-ship-style, across the places her vehicle wasn’t. It moved too fast for her fractured mind to make sense of what it revealed around her.

‘Search and Rescue,’ the voice said, sounding strained and uncomfortable and somehow closer. ‘If you can hear me, make any kind of noise.’

For an angel, he was awfully demanding.

Aimee tried to speak, but her words came out as a creepy kind of gurgle. He didn’t respond to her partial frog croak. She fumbled the hand that wasn’t pinned behind her and found her car’s horn, hoping to heaven she’d preserved enough battery.

She pressed.

And held.

The noise exploding through what had been so many hours of silence made her jump even though she knew it was coming, and her leg responded with sharp blades of protest. The long peal echoed through the darkness, sounding high and empty.

‘I hear you,’ the voice called back, sounding relieved and professional. ‘I’ll be with you soon. I’m just securing your car.’

A small lurch and a large clang were separated only by the barest of heartbeats, but then she felt and heard some of the weight of the car shift as whatever he’d used to secure it tightened into position. The move changed the dynamic of all the twisted fixtures in her front seat, and shifted some of the pressure of whatever had been pressing against her injured leg. It protested with violent sensation and she slammed her hand down on the horn again. Hard.

‘Ho!’ The voice yelled, then again urgently. Somewhere high above she thought she heard the word echo, but not in the same voice.

The tensioning stopped and the vehicle creaked and settled, more glass splintering from her windscreen and tinkling away into the night.

‘Are you okay?’ the voice yelled.

She swallowed back the pain and also wet her throat. ‘Yes,’ she cried feebly, and then stronger, ‘Yes. But my leg is trapped under the dash.’ She hoped he’d do the maths and make the connection that their securing of the car was making her pain worse. She didn’t have the energy or breath to explain.

‘Got it.’ She heard a thud on her roof but then nothing, no movement. Then some rustling outside the rear passenger side window. ‘Any other injuries?’ he called, closer. She heard the sounds of a mallet knocking something into place.

‘Uh … I can’t tell,’ she whimpered.

‘What’s your name?’ This time from somewhere over the top of her windscreen.

So they could advise her next of kin? Give her parents one more thing to fight over? she thought dismally. God, wouldn’t they both make a meal of this? ‘Aimee Leigh.’

He repeated that detail in short, efficient radio-speak to whoever he’d just called up to moments before. ‘Are you allergic to morphine, Aimee?’ he asked, definitely sounding close this time.

‘I don’t know.’ And she didn’t much care. The screaming of her leg had started to make every other part of her ache in sympathy.

‘Okay …’

She heard more rustling from beyond the tree limb her Honda was skewered on and she craned her head towards the empty front passenger seat. Suddenly the darkness glowed into an ethereal white-blue light and a glow-stick seemed to levitate through the window, around the enormous branch, and then come to rest on the crippled dash of her car. She blinked her eyes in protest at the assault of blazing light. But as they adjusted the full horror of her situation came back to her. She looked at where her leg disappeared into the crumpled mess that had been her steering console, down at her right arm, which was wedged behind her between the seat and her driver-side door, then back again at the half-a-tree which stretched its grabbing fist past her into the back of her little hatchback.

But just as she tasted the rising tang of panic the man spoke again, from beyond the tree. ‘How are you doing, Aimee? Talk to me.’

‘I’m—’ A mess. Terrified. Not ready to die. ‘—Okay. Where are you?’

‘Right here.’

And suddenly a gloved hand reached through the leaves of the tree branch that had made a kebab out of her car and stretched towards her. It was heavy-duty, fluoro-orange, caked in old dirt and had seen some serious action. But it was beautiful and welcome, and as the fingers stretched towards her from the darkness Aimee reached out and wrapped all of hers around two of his. He curled them back into his palm and held on.

‘Hi, Aimee,’ the disembodied voice puffed lightly. ‘I’m Sam, and I’ll be your rescuer today.’

Right then—for the first time in hours—Aimee believed that she was actually going to make it.

Search-and-Rescue-Sam couldn’t get close enough to do a visual inspection from outside the car, so he had her run through a verbal description of all her major body parts so he could try and assess her condition remotely. He seemed less concerned with her agonising leg than with the tightness in her chest, where her seatbelt bit, and with her forgotten arm—completely numb, immobile, and impossible for her to twist around to see.

‘I don’t like unknowns, Aimee Leigh,’ he murmured as he ducked away to check the tension on the ropes holding the car in place. He kept up with the assessing questions and she kept her answers short and sharp—pretty much all her straining lungs would allow. The whole time he circled the vehicle, equipment clanking, and bit by bit she felt the car firming up in its position.

‘I want to get a look at that arm if I can,’ he said when he reappeared at the window beyond the tree limb.

‘If I can’t see it from here how are you going to see it from there?’ she gasped.

‘I’m not. I’m going to try and get in there with you.’

How? The two of them were separated by three feet of solid tree. And her door wasn’t budging.

‘Can you pop the hatch?’

She knew what he was asking—could she reach the door release?—but the request struck her as ludicrous, as if he wanted to load some groceries into the back of her brutalised car. She started to laugh, but it degenerated into a pained wheeze.

‘Aimee? Hanging in there?’

Focus. He was working so hard to help her. ‘I’m just …’ She stretched her left arm across her body, to see if she could reach the release handle below her seat. She couldn’t and, worse, she puffed like a ninety-year-old woman just from that. ‘I’ll have to take my seatbelt off …’

‘No!’

The sudden urgency in his otherwise moderated voice shocked her into stillness, and she realised for the first time how hard he was working to keep her calm. He might be faking it one hundred percent, but it was working. Why the sudden urgency over her seatbelt? It had already done its job. It wasn’t as if she could crash twice.

‘I’ll come through the back window. Shield yourself from the falling glass if you can.’

It took him a moment to work his way around to the back of the car. She followed his progress with her senses and pressed her good foot to the brake pedal until she could see his legs in her rearview mirror, splayed wide and braced on the failing tail-lights of her hatch, as though gravity meant nothing to him.

Somewhere at the back of her muddled mind she knew there was something significant about the fact that he’d abseiled down to her. But then she was thoroughly distracted by the realisation that he was going to come in there with her—put himself at risk—to help her. Anxiety burbled up in her constricted chest.

‘Ready, Aimee? Cover your head.’

She curled her lone arm around her head and twisted towards the door. Behind her she heard a sharp crack, and then the high-pitched shattering of the back window. Tiny squares of safety glass showered down on her and pooled in the wrecked dash. She straightened and watched in the rearview mirror as Sam folded down her back seats and lowered himself to where she was trapped.

A moment later he appeared between the two front seats of the car, bending uncomfortably around the sub-branches of the tree limb.

‘Hey,’ he said, warm and rich near her ear.

An insane and embarrassing sob bubbled up inside her at having rescue so close at hand—at having him so close at hand—and she struggled to swallow it back. ‘I’m sorry …’ she choked.

‘Don’t be. You’re in an extraordinary situation. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t scared.’

He didn’t get it. How could he? She didn’t feel scared. She felt stupidly safe. Just because he was here. And that undid her more than all the fear of the hours before he’d come. How long had it been since she felt so instantly safe with a man?

‘Do you understand what’s happened to you, Aimee?’

‘I had an accident,’ she squeezed out. ‘I ran off the road.’

‘Yeah, you did. Your car’s gone down an embankment.

The back is pressed into the hillside and the front has come to rest against a tree.’

‘You make that sound so peaceful,’ she whispered. The complete opposite of the violence that had befallen her and her car. She twisted around to see his face, but the angle was too tricky and it hurt too much to twist any further.

‘Try not to move until I’ve stabilised your neck,’ he murmured gently. He reached past her and adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see her in it. And vice-versa. ‘I want you to look at my eyes, Aimee. Focus.’

She lifted hers to the mirror and met his concerned, compassionate gaze, eyes crinkled at the edges from working outdoors, and the bluest blue she’d ever seen. At least she thought they were blue. They could have been any colour, given the emergency lighting was casting a sickly pallor over everything. He slid his finger up between them.

‘Now, focus on my finger.’ He moved it left and right, forward and back. She tracked the gloved finger actively in the mirror, but slipped once and went back to his eyes—just for a moment, for a better look. The most amazing eyes. Just staring at them made her calmer. And more drowsy.

‘Okay.’ He seemed satisfied.

‘Did I pass?’

She lifted her head just slightly, so that the mirror caught the twist of his lips as he smiled. ‘Flying colours. You’re in pretty good shape for a girl wedged in a tree.’

She felt him brace his knees on the back of the front seats and heard him rifling through the kit he’d hauled in with him. ‘I need to check you out physically, Aimee. Is that going to be okay?’

The man who’d climbed in here to rescue her? ‘You can do … whatever you want.’

In her peripheral vision, in the dim glow of the cabin, she watched him strip off his gloves and twist a foam neck brace out of his bag.

‘Just a precaution,’ he said, before she could start worrying.

She let her head sag into the brace as he fitted it. Quite a comfortable precaution—if anything in this agonising situation could be called comfortable.

Next, he wedged a slimline torch between his teeth, and then he twisted through the gap between the driver and passenger seats, reaching for her legs. He held himself in place with one hand and dragged her torn skirt high up her thighs with the other. He pointed his torch down into the darkness at her feet, studying closely.

‘I felt it break,’ she said matter-of-factly—and softly, given how close his face was to hers—amazed that she could be calm at all. Still, what else could she do? Freaking out hadn’t helped her earlier.

‘It hasn’t broken the skin, though,’ he mumbled around the torch, sliding her dress modestly back into position. ‘That’s a good thing.’

He wasn’t going to lie, or play down what was happening to her. She appreciated that.

‘At least I can manage to break my leg the right way.’ She winced. ‘Wayne would be pleased.’ One of very few things her dominating ex would have appreciated—or possibly noticed—about her.

Sam was eight-tenths silhouette, since the glow-stick was behind him on the dash but suddenly the front of the car was full of the smell of oil and leather, rescue gear and sweat, and good, honest man.

‘Are you going to give me painkillers?’ she said, to dislodge the inappropriate thought, and because everything was really starting to hurt now that the car was more stable and the pressure points had shifted.

‘Not without knowing for sure you’re not allergic. And not with the pain in your chest; you have enough respiratory issues without me compounding it with medication.’

‘I hate pain,’ she said.

His chuckle was totally out of place in this situation, but it warmed her and gave her strength. ‘With the endorphins you’ll have racing through your system you’ll barely feel it,’ he said, before twisting away to rifle in his bag again. When he returned he had a small bottle with him. ‘But this will help take the edge off.’

She glanced sideways at the bottle. It didn’t look very medical. She lifted her curious eyes to him in mute question rather than waste more breath on a pointless question.

‘Green Ant Juice,’ he said. ‘It’s a natural painkiller. Aboriginal communities have used it for centuries.’

‘What makes it juicy?’

His pause was telling. ‘Better not to ask.’

Oh. ‘Will it taste like ants?’

The rummaging continued. He resurfaced with an empty syringe. ‘Have you tasted them?’

‘I’ve smelled them.’ The nasty, acrid scent of squashed ants.

Again the flash of white teeth in the mirror. ‘Your choice. You prefer the pain?’

For answer, she opened her mouth like a young bird, and he syringed a shot of the sticky syrup into it. ‘Good girl.’

His warm thumb gently wiped away a dribble of the not-quite-lemony juice that had caught on the corner of her lips. Her pulse picked up in response. Or it could have been the analgesic surging into her system.

Either way, it felt good.

The gentle touch was so caring and sweet, while being businesslike, that it brought tears back to her eyes. When was the last time someone had taken genuine care of her? Had just been there for her when it all went wrong? Her parents believed that prevention was infinitely better than the cure, and Wayne would have just rolled his eyes and scolded her for over-reacting.

As Sam withdrew his ungloved left hand her eyes were tear-free enough to notice that his ring finger was bare and uniformly tanned. Yeah, because that’s always important to know in life or death situations. She shook her head at her own subconscious. Her shoulder bit and she winced visibly.

‘I’m going to have a look at your arm, Aimee. Just keep very still.’

She did—not that she could feel a thing; her arm had been wedged back there for so long it wasn’t even bothering her, although obviously it was really bothering Sam. She heard and felt him changing positions, getting closer to her driver’s door.

‘Do you remember how the accident happened?’ he asked, making conversation while he fiddled around behind her.

She shook her head. ‘I was driving the A10. One minute everything was fine.’ She filled her strained lungs again. ‘The next I was sliding and then …’ She shuddered. ‘I remember the impact.’ Breath. ‘Then I passed out for a bit.’ Breath. ‘Then I woke up here in this tree. Stuck.’

Her strained respiration seemed unnaturally loud in the silence that followed. When he finally did speak he said, ‘Looks like an oil patch on the asphalt. A local passing through slid on it, too, but managed to stop before the edge. He saw your tail-lights down here and called it in.’

Thank goodness he did. I might have been out here for days. Aimee lifted her chin to see better in the mirror what he was doing behind her. ‘Sam, don’t worry about whether it’s going to hurt. Just do whatever you have to do. I’m a rip-the-Bandaid-off kind of girl, despite what I said earlier about pain.’

She felt his pause more than heard it. ‘You can’t feel this?’

The worry in his voice spiked her heart into a rapid flutter. ‘I can’t feel anything.’

When he spoke again, his voice was more carefully moderated. ‘Your arm is wedged back here. I think it’s dislocated. I’ve freed it up a little bit, and I’m going to try to push it forward, but this will go one of two ways. Either you won’t feel a thing even once it’s free—’

Meaning she might have damaged something permanently.

‘—or the sensation is going to come back as soon as it’s free. And if that happens it’s going to hurt like hell.’

She felt a tug, but no pain. It was like having a numb tooth yanked. So far so good. ‘Won’t the ant juice help?’

‘It won’t have taken full effect—’

That was as far as he got. With a nasty crack her arm came free, and he pushed it forward back into the front seat where it belonged. The pain burst like white light behind her eyes, and came from her throat in an agonised retch as full sensation returned—arm burning, shoulder screaming.

His hands were at her hair instantly, stroking it back, soothing. ‘That’s the worst of it, Aimee. It’s all done now,’ he murmured, over and over. ‘All done …’

She rocked where she sat, holding her breath, damming back the tears, sucking the pain in, wanting so badly to be as brave as Sam was in coming down here for her. Then, as the ant juice and her own adrenaline kicked in, the rocking slowed and her body eased back in the seat, not fighting the restraint of the seatbelt as much.

‘Better?’ That voice again, warm and low just behind her. She lifted her eyes to the crooked rearview mirror, reached for it slowly with her good arm, missed and tried again through a slight fogginess. She adjusted it and found his eyes.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, knowing it would never be enough, but just so grateful that she was no longer alone with her thoughts and fears of death.

He knew what she was saying. ‘You’re welcome. I’m sorry that hurt so much.’

‘Not your fault. And it’s easing off now.’ If easing off could describe the deep, dull, throb coming from her right arm and leg. ‘And it’s made it easier to breathe. Talk.’

Though not perfectly.

‘Don’t get comfortable. We have a long way to go.’

‘Is it time to get out?’ God, she hoped so. Every time the car creaked and settled the breath was sucked out of her lungs.

The compassion turned to caution. ‘Not just yet. We have to wait for it to get a little bit lighter. It’s not safe to try and haul you out in the dark.’

Given how unsafe she felt staying in, that was saying something. Although that wasn’t strictly true; everything had got a whole heap less scary the moment Sam had first called out to her. But every minute she was here he was here, risking his life, too. ‘You should go, then. Come back when it’s morning.’

His eyes narrowed in the mirror. ‘But you’d be alone.’

As uncomfortable as that thought made her, it was a heck of a lot more comfortable than something happening to him because of her. ‘I’ve been alone most of the night. A few more hours won’t kill me.’ Except that it very well might, if things went wrong, her lurching stomach reminded her. But at least it would only be her. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.’

The crinkles at the corners of his eyes multiplied. ‘I appreciate the thought, but I know what I’m doing.’

‘But the hatch isn’t open.’ So if the car slipped further it wouldn’t just slide away from around him, and the harness she guessed tethered him to something above them. It would take him, too. And who knew how steep this embankment was.

‘We’re secure enough.’

‘Do you do this for a living?’ Suddenly she wanted to know. What kind of person risked his life for total strangers? Plus talking took her mind off … everything else.

‘Amongst other things, yes.’

She tipped her head and spoke more freely than she might have without fifty mils of squished ants zooming through her blood. ‘Are you an adrenaline junkie?’

He laughed and checked her pulse, his fingers warm and sure at the base of her jaw under the foam neck brace. Her heart kicked up its pace.

‘A little fast …’ he murmured to himself, then turned his focus back to her. ‘No, I’m not interested in risk-taking for the sake of it. But to save someone’s life …’

‘I don’t want you risking your life for mine.’

Blue eyes held hers in the mirror. ‘Why not?’

‘Because …’ it wasn’t worth it ‘… this was my mistake. You shouldn’t have to pay for it.’

He looked like he wanted to argue. ‘Well, if I do my job right then neither of us will be paying. Excuse me a sec.’

He reached to his collar and pressed a button she’d only just noticed. He had a speedy conversation with whoever was on the other end of the radio at his hip. It was mostly coded medical talk, but she read his thin lips and his deep frown well enough.

‘Assess this as Code Three. Will offer hourly sit-reps.’ More distant crackles, then his eyes lifted to hers in the mirror and held them as he spoke, a fatal resignation written clearly in them. ‘Negative, Topside. Requiring static again. We’ve just gone Code Two.’

After not much more communication he signed off, and the silence that followed was the longest that had fallen since he’d scrambled into her beleaguered Honda. When he finally did speak, it was hushed.

He cleared his throat. ‘If anyone asks, you passed out just then.’

Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Did you just lie?’

‘Would you feel better if I said I save them up for very important moments?’

I’d feel better if you didn’t do it at all. Her father was a liar, and she didn’t like even the slightest connection between the two men in her mind.

She raised both brows for answer. Wow, when had she got so confident? One month ago she never would have challenged someone like this. Driving off a mountain really brought out the best in a girl.

Plus, with Sam, she felt safe expressing herself. On five minutes’ acquaintance.

He sighed and relented at her pointed look. ‘It seems I’m the only one who thinks I’m better off down here with you,’ he said.

‘Were you ordered to go back up? Why?’

He considered her in the mirror. Now that her arm was free she could twist her body further around. She did it now, turning to face him for the first time, though it hurt to do it. Her already tight breath caught further.

She hadn’t imagined it … Piece by piece in the mirror she’d thought he was intriguing. Fully assembled he was gorgeous. There was something almost … leonine … about the way his features all came together. Dark, high eyebrows over blue almond-shaped eyes. Defined cheekbones, trigger jaw. All with a coat of rugged splashed over the top. As if she wasn’t breathy enough …

‘Why, Sam?’

His mind worked furiously and visibly. ‘Okay …’ He resettled himself into the gap between the seats and lowered his voice. As if he was about to share a great secret. As if there was anyone but them here to hear it.

‘We’re not just resting against a tree, Aimee. Or on a hillside.’

She appreciated his use of the collective. ‘We’ sounded so much better than ‘you’ when someone was breaking bad news. And he was. His whole body confessed it.

‘Where are we?’ she whispered, glancing out at the inky blackness around them and remembering how she’d imagined earlier that it was death’s waiting room. But as she said the words she realised … He’d abseiled down to her. And when she’d first tried to move her leg and screamed a bird had exploded from its roost right next to her window, not high above it. And she’d heard her wheels spinning freely in space when she’d first slammed to a stop.

Her heart lurched.

‘Or should I be asking how high are we?’

CHAPTER TWO

SHE saw the truth in the flinch of his dark brows. A tight pain stabbed high in her chest. She was so, so bad with heights. ‘Oh, my God …’

‘Aimee, stay calm. We’re secure. But we don’t know what damage the impact has done to the tree—if any. That’s the unknown.’

She stared at him. ‘You hate unknowns?’

His eyes grew serious. ‘Yeah. I do.’

‘But you’re in here.’

‘I’ve made it safe.’

But still he was refusing to leave her. ‘You have to go.’

‘No.’

‘Sam—’

‘It’s going to get light in a couple of hours,’ he pushed on, serious. ‘I want to be here when that happens.’

For the rescue? Or for when she could see what was below them—or wasn’t—and went completely to pieces? She shifted her focus again and stared out through her shattered, flimsy windscreen, partially held together only by struggling tint film. The only thing stopping her from falling into—and through—that windscreen was her seatbelt.

She turned back to stare at him again. In truth she really, horribly, desperately didn’t want to be alone. But she didn’t want him hurt, either. Not the man who’d taken such gentle care of her.

‘Don’t even worry about it, Aimee,’ he said, before she’d even finished thinking it through. ‘It’s not your choice to make. It’s mine.’

‘I don’t get a say?’

‘None. I’m in charge in this vehicle. It’s my call.’

I’m in charge. How many years had she secretly rebelled against ‘in charge’ men. Men who thought they knew what was best for her and insisted on spelling it out. Her father. Wayne. Men who liked her better passive, like her mother. Yet here she was crumbling the moment an honest-to-goodness ‘take charge’ man told her what to do.

But, truthfully, she didn’t want to be alone. Not for one more moment of this ordeal.

‘So, what do we do until it gets light?’ she asked.

‘I’ll keep monitoring your condition, make sure the car’s still sound. I can radio up for anything you need.’

Silence fell. ‘So we just … talk?’

‘Talking is good. I don’t want you dropping off to sleep.’

But making small talk seemed wrong under the circumstances. And it was just too much of a reminder that she didn’t know him at all, despite the strange kind of intimacy that was forming between them. A bubble she didn’t particularly want to burst.

‘What do we talk about?’

‘Anything you want. I’m told I’m good company.’

She glanced up into the mirror in time to see him flick his eyes quickly away. Maybe this was awkward for him, too.

She scratched around for something to say that wasn’t about the weather. Something a bit more meaningful. Something that would normalise this crazy situation. ‘You said Search and Rescue is only part of your job. What’s the other part?’ With every minute that passed, her breath was coming more easily.

He seemed unused to making conversation with his rescuees, but he answered after just a moment. ‘I’m a ranger for Tasmania’s Parks and Wildlife Service.’

The man who abseiled down rockfaces to save damsels in distress also looked after forests and the creatures in them. Of course he did. ‘So this is just moonlighting for you?’

He chuckled, and shone the small torch on the fixings of her seatbelt. ‘Don’t worry. They sent me because I’m the best vertical rescue guy in the district. We don’t get enough demand for a full time Search and Rescue team up here.’

‘Small mercies.’

He sat back. ‘True.’

‘Which do you enjoy more?’

His eyes lifted back to hers in the mirror, held them in his surprise. Had no one ever asked him that? ‘Hard to say. Search and Rescue is more … tangible. Immediate. But the forests need a champion, too.’

‘This part has got to be more exciting, though?’ Her dry tongue had made a mess of that sentence.

Sam rummaged in his equipment for a moment, before reappearing between the seats with a sponge soaked in bottled water. He pressed it to her lips and Aimee sucked at it gratefully.

‘It’s not the excitement I’m conscious of.’ He frowned as she sucked. ‘Though that’s how it is for some of my colleagues. For me it’s the importance.’ He withdrew the sucked-dry sponge and resaturated it. ‘I think I’d feel the same way if it was national secrets I was protecting. Or a vial of some rare cells instead of a person.’

The ants’ innards were making her feel very rubbery and relaxed, and the water had buoyed her spirits. She chuckled, low and mellow. ‘Just in case I was beginning to feel special.’

He smiled at her. ‘Right now you’re very special. There’s sixteen trained professionals up there—all here for you.’

The scale of the rescue operation came crashing into focus for her. That was sixteen people who should be home in bed, wrapped around their loved ones. ‘I’m so sorry—’

‘Aimee, don’t be. It’s what we do.’

Did Sam have someone like that at home? Someone worrying about him when he was out? She could hardly ask that question, so she asked instead, ‘How many lives have you saved?’

He didn’t even need to count. ‘Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight after today.’

Aimee’s eyebrows shot up, and she turned in her seat as best she could. Her shoulder bit cruelly. His hand pressed her back into stillness gently.

‘Twenty-seven! That’s amazing.’ Then she looked more closely at him. At the shadows in his gaze. ‘How many have you lost?’

‘I don’t count the losses.’

Rubbish. Everyone counted the losses. It was human nature. ‘Meaning, “I’m not about to tell a woman trapped in her car whether or not I saved the last woman trapped in her car”?’

His smile was gentle. ‘Meaning I don’t like to think about it.’

No. She could understand that. Given how much of a partnership this rescue was, she could only imagine how he’d feel when he couldn’t save someone. Maybe someone he’d bonded with. Like they were bonding now. She smiled tightly. ‘Well, on behalf of all women everywhere trapped in their cars I’d like to say thank you for trying. We can’t ask for more.’

Ridiculously, just acknowledging that she wasn’t the first person who’d been in a life-or-death situation made her feel just a little bit more in control of this one. Other people had survived to tell their tales.

In control. A further novelty. She frowned. How bad had she let things get?

‘Sure you can. You can ask me for whatever you need right up until they’re loading you into the back of the ambulance. Then I know I’ve done everything I can.’

‘Putting yourself at so much risk. It must be hard on …’ Your family. Your girlfriend. Was she seriously going to start obsessing on his availability? It seemed so transparent. Not to mention hideously inappropriate. In that moment she determined not to even hint for more information about his personal life. ‘Hard on you … emotionally.’

He thought about that. ‘The benefits outweigh the negatives or I wouldn’t do it.’

He reached forward to check her pulse again and she studied the line of his face. There was more to it than that, she was sure. But it would be rude to dig. His fingers brushed under her jaw for the third time and her already tight breath caught further.

‘Would my wrist be easier?’ she asked, lifting her good arm because it felt like the appropriate thing to do.

He shook his head and pressed tantalisingly into the skin just down from her ear, monitoring his watch. ‘You have a nice strong pulse there.’

And it gets stronger every time you brush those fingers along my throat.

‘Aimee …?’ She looked at him sideways, her lashes as low as his voice. His smile was half twist, half chuckle. ‘Don’t hold your breath—it affects your pulse.’

Heat surged up her throat around his fingers. Wow. Did ant juice turn everyone into a hormone harlot?

Fortunately he misread her flush. ‘Don’t feel awkward. I’m trained for this, but I’m guessing this is your first major incident.’

She nodded. ‘I’ve never even been to hospital.’

‘Never?’

She grasped at the normal topic of conversation. ‘Not counting my birth.’

‘Are you super-healthy or just super lucky?’

‘A little of both. And it helps when your parents won’t let you lift so much as a box without assistance.’ The same as every man she’d dated. ‘It’s hard to hurt yourself falling out of a tree when they are all off-limits. And streams. And streets.’

‘Protective, huh?’

‘You could say that.’ Or you could say her parents were competitive and bitter after their divorce and neither of them wanted to give the other the slightest ammunition. ‘They both went a bit overboard in protecting me.’ She’d grown up thinking that was normal. ‘It wasn’t until I left home that I realised other kids were allowed to make mistakes.’

‘How old were you when you left home?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘So you get points for taking the initiative and getting out of there?’

It hadn’t been easy to break away from both of them so, yeah, she did get points.

But then she lost them again for leaping out of the frypan into the fire with a nightmare like Way ne.

‘Anyway, it’s just as well my parents aren’t here to see this,’ she joked. ‘They’d have me locked up for ever and never let me leave the house.’ Or they’d have each other in court trying to score points off me.

‘Give them credit for getting you this far in one piece,’ he murmured.

She laughed, and then winced at the pain. ‘If you don’t count the broken leg and dislocated shoulder. And the bruised sternum.’

‘Don’t forget the gash on your forehead.’

Really? Her hand slid up and followed the trail of stickiness down to her lashes. That explained the stinging in her eyes earlier. Lord, what must she look like? Black and blue and with the fine white powder from three airbags all over her? She wanted to check in the mirror, but that just smacked of way too much vanity. And it was too close to publicly declaring her interest in whether or not Sam was looking at her as her … or just as a person to be rescued.

‘Here …’ he said, curling between the seats again and bringing his face closer to hers. He efficiently swabbed at the superficial cut with a damp medicated wipe, and then fixed the two sides of the wound together with butterfly tape. Then he gently swabbed up some of the dried blood that ran down over her brow. Aimee stole a chance to breathe in some of his air.

‘You’ll be back to beautiful in no time,’ he said.

The temptation to stare at his eyes close-up was overwhelming, but it seemed too intimate suddenly so she shifted her focus lower, to his lips, before forcing them away for something less gratuitous. Which was how she ended up staring at a freckle just left of his nose while he ministered to her wound.

Freckle-staring seemed suitably modest.

Awkwardness tangled in amongst the awareness suddenly zinging between them, and she struggled for something harmless to say. ‘I can honestly say that’s the first time anyone has ever said that to me. Especially by the dying light of a glow stick.’

A deep frown cut his handsome face immediately as he seemed to realise that the iridescent emergency light had dimmed to something closer to a sickly, flickering candlelight. He stared at it as though he couldn’t quite believe he’d failed to notice, then disappeared into the back to rummage in his bottomless kit.

‘It’s got nothing to do with the colour in your cheeks,’ he said, snapping a second glow-stick to activate the chemicals inside, and reaching forward to place it next to the first. Las Vegas light filled the car, and for a heartbeat the tree outside the windscreen, but the graduated darkness beyond it that didn’t show a hint of ground.

Aimee swallowed hard.

‘Look at how you’re handling yourself,’ he said. ‘You’re very calm, under the circumstances.’

She captured his eyes in the mirror. ‘It just means I’m good at denial. It doesn’t mean I’m not afraid.’

He stilled, and the intensity in his gaze reached right through the glass of the mirror and twisted around her lungs, preventing them from expanding. ‘I’m not leaving you, Aimee.’

‘I know,’ she squeezed out.

‘We’ll be out in a couple of hours.’

‘Uh-huh.’ But it sounded false even to her own ears.

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I want to. I really do.’

‘Do you trust me?’

Did she? She’d believed every single thing he’d said. She’d done every single thing he’d asked, without question, and not just because he’d pulled rank on her. Sam was trained, capable and compassionate, and he’d not done anything to earn her distrust. Even though she’d known him less than an hour she felt a more natural connection with him than some of the people she’d known her whole life.

Wow. That was a bit sad.

‘I do trust you,’ she whispered. But he’d have no way of knowing how rare that was.

‘Then trust I’ll get you out of here.’

She looked at him long and hard. ‘I know you want to.’

‘And I always get what I want.’

As a kid, she’d practised for weeks to teach herself the one-eyebrow lift and she did it now, desperate to retreat from the chemistry swirling smoke-like around them. The butterfly tape over her left brow tugged slightly. ‘Such confidence.’

‘I don’t start something without finishing it. It’s a point of principle.’

So how had he coped with those people he’d not been able to save? Maybe sitting in vehicles like this one with them, knowing he’d failed? Her heart ached for the memories he must have. But she wasn’t about to ask. For his sake … and hers.

She shivered convulsively. ‘Did the temperature just drop?’

‘Hang on …’ He disappeared for a moment and then squeezed back through the gap with a tightly rolled silver tube. It unfolded into an Aimee-sized foil blanket. Together they tucked it around her as best they could. Down over her good leg. Carefully around her injured arm.

Sam stroked back her hair from the neck brace with two fingers and tucked a corner of the blanket in behind her shoulder. Heat surged where he touched and became trapped beneath the insulation. A perverse little voice wondered if it would be inappropriate to ask him to touch her every ten minutes, to keep the heat levels optimum. She might as well get some use out of the unexpected chemistry between her and her knight-in-shining-fluoro. His heat soaked into her chilled skin.

‘God, that’s good …’ Her good hand was outside the blanket, and she used it to tuck the foil tightly under her thighs to seal more warmth in.

‘Don’t cover your injured leg,’ he said, withdrawing back between the seats. ‘The cold is actually good for it.’ Then, without asking, he reached forward and took her exposed hand between his and started to rub it. Vigorously. Impersonally. Creating a friction heat that soaked into her icy fingers and wrist. He did the same up and down her bare arm.

‘How’s that?’ he murmured.

Heavenly. And it had nothing to do with the blanket. ‘Better.’

He rubbed in silence as the insulation from the foil sheet did its job. But as the minutes went by his businesslike rubbing slowed and turned into a hybrid of a massage and a hold. Just cupping her smaller hand between his own like a heated human glove.

‘So …’ The unease with which he paused made her wonder whether there was still more bad news to come. ‘Is there … anyone you’d like us to call for you? Your parents?’ He glanced down at the fingers he held within his own. ‘A partner?’

She frowned. Absolutely not Wayne. They were well and truly over. And she’d prefer to call her parents from the safety of terra-firma, when they wouldn’t have to see the immediate evidence of what heading off alone into the wilds had done to her and when they’d have less reason to tear each other to pieces. Work wouldn’t miss her for days yet—they knew how she got when she got to the transcribing stage of a project. ‘No. Not if you truly believe we’ll make it.’

‘We’ll make it.’ His certainty soaked through her just like his body heat. ‘But is there someone you’d call if you thought you weren’t going to make it?’

‘Hedging your bets, Sam?’ Maybe that was wise. She still had to get hauled out of here successfully.

His lips twisted. ‘It would be wrong of me not to ask.’

Danielle? That would get a tick in the friend box and the work box at the same time. She folded her brows and tried to make her foggy brain focus …

‘It’s not like prison, Aimee. You can have more than one phone call.’ Then he looked closer. ‘Or none at all. It’s not compulsory.’

How pathetic if she couldn’t even identify one ‘in case of emergency’ person. And how ridiculous. She sighed. ‘My parents, probably.’

He pulled a small notepad from his top pocket. ‘Want to give me a number?’

She stared at him, and then to the floor of the passenger seat. ‘Their numbers are in my phone.’

He blinked at that. ‘You don’t know your parents’ phone numbers?’

‘I have them on speed dial.’ There was no way that didn’t sound defensive. Not when she knew how little wear those two buttons actually got.

‘How about a name and address, then?’

There was no judgement there, yet his words somehow reeked of it. She glared and provided the information; he jotted it down, then called it up to all those people waiting up top. Waiting for sunrise. They confirmed, and promised to make contact with her parents. She wanted to shout out so they’d hear her: Wait until seven. Dad hates being woken. Sam held the earpiece out so she could hear their acknowledgement.

Then they both fell into uncomfortable silence. It stretched out endlessly and echoed with what he wasn’t saying.

She pressed back against her seat. ‘Go ahead, Sam. Just say it. We can’t sit here in silence.’

‘Say what?’

‘Whatever’s making you twitch.’

Even with full permission, and all the time in the world to tell her what he thought, Sam refrained. It was sad how surprised she was about that. Men in her life didn’t usually withhold their opinions. Or their judgement. Not even for a moment.

‘I watched my parents raise my brothers and sisters. Eighty percent of it was guesswork, I reckon. Parents don’t get a manual.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re from a big family?’

He nodded. ‘And my folks got a whole lot more right with my younger brothers than with me, so maybe practice makes perfect?’

‘What did they get wrong with you, Search-and-Rescue-Sam?’ He seemed pretty perfect to her. Heroic, a good listener, smart, gentle fingers, and live electricity zinging through his bloodstream …

‘Oh-ho … Plenty. I made their lives hell once I hit puberty.’

She studied him. ‘I can see you as a heart-breaker with the girls.’

He smiled. ‘No more than your average teen. But I was a handful, and I ran with some wild mates.’

‘Another thing I don’t have trouble seeing.’ Maybe it was the uniform. Maybe it was the torn-out-of-bed-at-midnight stubble. Maybe it was the glint in those blue eyes. He had the bad-boy gene for sure. Just a small one. Not big enough to be the slightest bit off-putting but just big enough to be appealing. Dangerously appealing.

‘Fortunately my older brother intervened, and turned me into the fine, upstanding citizen you see before you.’

She laughed, and her spirits lifted a hint more. Insane and impossible, but true enough. She shifted in her seat to remind herself of where they were and how much danger they were still in. ‘Tell me about him. I’m sick of talking about me.’

And of thinking about the wrong turns she’d made in her life.

‘Tony’s two years older than me. The first. The best.’

‘Is that your parents’ estimation or yours?’

He looked at her. ‘Definitely mine. He was everything I wanted to be growing up. The full hero-worship catastrophe.’

She smiled. ‘I can’t imagine having siblings.’

‘I can’t imagine not.’

‘You want kids? In the future?’ she added, in case her breathless question sounded too much like an offer.

He shrugged. ‘Isn’t that why we’re here? As a species, I mean? I like my genes, I’d like to see what else could be done with them.’

She was starting to like his genes, too. Very much. He had a whole swag of good-guy genes to go with the bad-boy one. And the dreamy eyes. Silence fell, and she realised into what personal territory they’d strayed. She was practically interviewing him for the job of future husband. ‘Sorry. Occupational hazard. I get way too interested in people’s lives.’

‘Why? What do you do?’

‘I’m a historian. Oral History. For the Department of Heritage.’

‘You talk to people for a living?’

‘I swing between talking endlessly to people and then spending weeks alone pulling their stories into shape.’

‘What for?’

‘So they’re not lost.’

‘I mean what happens with them?’

She shrugged. ‘They get archived. Locked away somewhere safe.’

‘No one ever hears them?’

‘Sure they do. Every story is catalogued by topic and theme and subject, so they can be accessed by researchers into just about anything anywhere in the world.’

‘Do you get to see the end results?’ he asked.

‘Not usually. Just my own research.’

‘So your work just goes on file somewhere? To gather dust, potentially, if no one ever looks for it?’ he mused.

‘Potentially.’ She shrugged. ‘You think something’s missing from that equation?’

‘Isn’t it a bit … thankless?’

She stared at him, wondering if he realised what he’d just revealed. Search-and-Rescue-Sam liked to be appreciated. This was exactly why she loved to do what she did. For the moments a person let a bit of his true self slip.

She smiled. ‘Not at all. Our jobs aren’t too dissimilar.’

He frowned at her.

‘We both save lives. You preserve their flesh for another few decades,’ she said. ‘I preserve their stories for ever. For their family. For perpetuity. There’s more to people’s time on earth than genetics.’

Which was why it was such a crime that her life was only just beginning at the ripe old age of twenty-five. She’d wasted so much time.

He considered her. ‘So what’s your story, Aimee Leigh? What are you doing up here in the highlands?’

‘Working. I’ve just finished a history, and the next few weeks I’ll be pulling it all together.’ She glanced around. ‘Or I would have been.’

‘You always do that in remote parts of the state?’

‘I wanted some time alone. I rented a house at Brady’s Lake.’

His eyebrows lifted. ‘How’s that time alone working out for you?’

Laughing felt too good. She went on longer than was probably necessary, and ended in a hacking cough. Sam reached out and slid his warm fingers to her pulse again, counting, then saying, ‘Nothing makes you reassess your life quite like nearly losing it.’

True enough. She’d planned on doing some serious soul-searching while up in the highlands and really getting to grips with how she’d let others run her life for so long. She refused to think it was because she wasn’t capable.

Well, she’d wanted space to think and she’d got it. Above, below and on both sides.

The pause fell again. But then she had a thought. ‘Can you see my handbag, Sam?’

He looked around. ‘Where is it?’

‘It was on the passenger seat.’ Not any more.

‘What do you need? Your wallet?’

‘That’s all replaceable. But I have someone’s life in there.’

‘The person whose history you were about to start working on?’

She nodded. ‘All my notes on a thumb drive.’

‘I’ll have a look,’ he said. ‘Not like I have somewhere else to be.’

He wedged himself between the seats again, but twisted away from her this time, bracing his spread knees on the seat backs and reaching out for the glow-stick. The yellow light moved with him as he stretched down towards the floor of the passenger seat.

But as he did so the car lurched.

‘Sam!’ Aimee screamed, just as his two-way radio burst into a flurry of activity. But the sudden splintering pain from her chest crippled her voice.

He froze in position and then slowly retreated, his strong muscles pulling him back up, bringing the light with him. He spoke confidently into the transmitter at his collar, but his words were three-parts buzz to Aimee. Her heart hammered so hard against her chest wall she was sure it might just split open.

She might have caused them to go crashing to the ground—who knew how far below? For a handbag! For a story! Tears filled her eyes.

‘Sorry, Aimee,’ he said, breathing heavily and righting himself more fully. ‘I’ll get it when the car’s hauled up.’

She shook her head, unable to speak, unable to forgive herself for putting them both at such risk.

He looked more closely at her. ‘Aimee? Were you hurt? Is the pain back?’

She shook her head—too frightened to speak—though her burst of activity had definitely got her pain receptors shrieking.

‘I wouldn’t have tried that if I’d thought it would actually dislodge us. That was just a settle. It will probably happen again whether we move or not. It doesn’t mean we’re going to fall.’

Tell her clenched bladder that. She nodded quickly. Still too scared to move more than a centimetre.

He found her eyes in the mirror. ‘Aimee, look at me.’

She avoided his eyes, knowing what she’d just done. Get my handbag, Sam … As though they were just sitting here waiting for a bus. Maybe her parents were right not to trust her with important decisions.

‘At me, Aimee.’

Finally she forced her focus to the mirror, to the blue, blue eyes waiting for her there. They were steady and serious, and just so reliable it was hard not to believe him when he spoke. ‘We’re thoroughly wedged between the tree and the rockface, and tethered to a three-tonne truck up top. We won’t be square-dancing any time soon, but you don’t need to fear moving. We are not going to fall.’

She looked at the rugged cut of his jaw and followed it down to the full slash of his lips, then up to his strong, straight nose and back to his eyes. Every part of him said reliable. Capable. Experienced. And a big part of her responded to the innate certainty in his manner. But an even bigger part of her was responding to something else. Something more fundamental. The something that would never have let him get this close, this quickly under her skin, if not for the fact that the fates had thrown them together like this. She would have followed him out onto the bonnet of her car with no safety harness if he’d asked her to with the kind of sincerity and promise that he was throwing at her right now in the mirror.

And extraordinary as it was, given how slow she was to trust strangers, she realised why.

She believed in him.

‘We are not going to fall,’ he’d said. She nodded, letting her breath out on a long, controlled hiss.

But deep down she feared that while that might be true literally, she could see herself falling very easily for a man like Sam. And just as hard.

Under these circumstances, that was a very, very bad idea.

CHAPTER THREE

‘SO who’s Wayne?’

Aimee’s head came up with a snap as Sam shifted again behind her. He was a big guy, and he had squeezed himself into the small space left vacant by the tree branches in the back of her little car and been settled there for over an hour.

‘Wayne?’

‘You mentioned his name earlier. Boyfriend? Brother?’

Was this conversation or curiosity? ‘Ex.’

‘Recent ex?’

‘Recent enough. Why?’

‘There was a … certain tone in your voice when you mentioned him.’

‘A certain sarcastic tone?’

She heard the smile in his voice. ‘Possibly.’

Aimee shifted back in her seat. Wayne was not someone she usually liked to talk about, liked even to think about, but all bets were off in this surreal setting. Their physical proximity demanded it. ‘Wayne and I turned out not to be a good fit.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I’m not. I’d rather have found out now than later.’ And it was true—no matter how challenging she’d found it to walk away. Even though he’d been giving her clear signals that she was somehow deficient in his eyes. Even though she knew he wasn’t good for her. She’d wriggled out from under the controlling thumbs of her parents only to fall prey to a man just like them at a time when she was most susceptible to him. ‘If I’d put any longer into the relationship I might have been more reluctant to end it.’

Another long pause. Funny how she’d only known Sam a handful of minutes but she already knew how to tell a thinking pause from an awkward one. This was thinking.

‘Not everyone finds that strength,’ he finally said.

‘You learn a thing or two recording life histories for a living. About achievements. About regrets. I don’t want any regrets in my life.’

She’d lost him again. His eyes stared out into the darkness.

What was his story?

‘Sam,’ she risked, after a comfortable silence had stretched out, ‘any chance you can lower the back of my seat a bit? Safely?’ She didn’t want a repeat of what happened before.

He studied the angle of the car and her position in it. His answer was reluctant. ‘The seatbelt is working well right now specifically because it’s nearly at ninety degrees.’

‘Even just a little bit? It’s doing my head in, looking straight down, wondering what’s down there, knowing that I’d crash straight through if the seatbelt gave.’

His hand slipped onto her shoulder through the gap between the seats. ‘The seatbelt is what’s keeping your body from putting too much weight on your bad leg.’

Oh.

Her disappointment must have reached him, though, because he said a moment later, ‘Let me just try something.’ He rummaged in his kit again, and then emerged with a set of flex-straps.

Aimee chuckled tightly. ‘You got a decaf latte in that Tardis, Doctor?’

He smiled as he wrapped one strap carefully around her waist and fixed it behind the seat, then the other under her good shoulder and hooked it on the headrest. ‘These aren’t generally for people, but I’ll be gentle with them.’

He pulled the two together and clipped one end of a climbing tether onto it, then fixed the other end to his own harness. If she fell she’d snag on his safety rope. Or pull him down with her.

That was a cheery thought!

‘Ready?’

So ready. So very ready not to be facing death literally head-on for every minute of this ordeal. She felt him fumbling along the edge of her seat for the recline lever and then suddenly the back of the seat gave slightly—just slightly—and he lowered it halfway to a fully reclined position. She hung on to her seatbelt lifeline and prepared for the pain of more of her body weight hitting her leg, but the flexi-straps did their job and held her fast to the seat-back. It really wasn’t too bad.

‘Oh, thank you.’ Her view was now the buckled roof of the car. A thousand times better than hanging out over who knew what. ‘Thank you, Sam.’

With her seat now reclined into the limited free space in the back of the car, there was nowhere for him to go but into the expanded gap between the front seats. He wedged himself there, with his spine to the passenger seat back, his shoulder pressing against the branch, facing her across the tiny gulf he’d opened up.

Unexpected bonus. She could talk to him front on.

‘You look funny,’ she said softly. Though still gorgeous. ‘Your face is back to front without the mirror.’

‘You look good.’ He smiled, then flushed as she dropped her eyes briefly. ‘I just meant that pretty much everything on you is intact. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to find that. Just to hear you honk that damned horn.’

Aimee sobered. He must hold some truly terrible images in his head.

‘It’s always the calmest most compliant people that have the worst injuries. They’re the ones I dream about later.’ He tucked her foil covering back in, keeping up his part of the conversation. She let his deep, rich voice wash over her. ‘It’s the guy with a twisted ankle and a golf tournament to get to that makes life hell. We’ve had hikers activate their EPIRB halfway up a mountain because they’re tired and want a lift back down.’ He shook his head.

‘Where do I fall on that scale?’ Was she being too high maintenance? Get my handbag, Sam. Lower my seat, Sam …

‘You have a scale all your own. All the reason in the world to be losing it, but holding up pretty well all things considered.’

She was—and that was really saying something, given her upbringing. Where the heck would she have learned resilience from in her bubblewrap childhood? But honour made her confess. ‘I was sobbing my heart out before I heard you calling.’

That seemed to genuinely pain him. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to you quicker. We had to assess the safety.’

She pinned him with her gaze. ‘I’m so glad you found me at all. Imagine if you hadn’t.’ It hit her then, for the first time, how long, slow and awful her death would have been. She swallowed back a gnarled lump and just stared, watching the play of emotion running over his features. Sadness. Regret. Confusion. But then his eyes lifted and it was just … light. And it changed him.

‘How old are you, Sam?’

‘Thirty-one.’

‘How is it that a man like you who wants children doesn’t yet have any?’ That was the closest she’d come to asking him outright: Why are you still single?

His eyes grew wary, but he finally answered. ‘It takes one to want it but two to make it a reality.’

‘You don’t have women knocking down your door to help you along with that reality? You’re gorgeous.’

His eyes grew cautious. But they didn’t dull. On the contrary, they filled with a rich sparkle. ‘Are you offering?’

She held her breath. Tilted her head. ‘Are you flirting?’

The bright sparkle in his eyes immediately dimmed. The smile straightened out into a half-frown.

Her breath caught. ‘You are.’

‘Sorry. Really inappropriate. Just playing to my strengths.’

His confusion touched her. ‘Don’t apologise. I’m battered and broken and feeling pretty average. It made me smile.’

‘I’m glad I could make you smile, then.’

‘Do they train you for that?’ she asked pertly.

‘For what?’

‘Keeping up people’s spirits with a sexy smile.’

The hint of colour high in his jaw brought her back to her senses. The man was just trying to keep her alive. He would say just about anything. Flirting included. It probably was in his training manual. Which meant it had to end. One of them had to put things back on a more real footing.

She took a deep breath. ‘Sorry, Sam. I think that was the ant juice talking. I apologise.’

He brushed it off with a shake of his head. ‘It’s not generally known for its truth serum properties.’

A blush stole up her cheeks, but this time he was staring straight at her. There was no hiding it. ‘A crazy side-effect?’

‘It’s probably written on the bottle somewhere. “May cause outbursts of inappropriate confession.”’

A gentleman, too. Handing her as dignified an exit as she was going to get. ‘Thank you. For keeping me sane.’ For keeping things light.

‘That’s how this works. You’re the victim. Whatever you need …’

Victim. The word put an early end to the golden glow of promise that had filled her from the inside out at his gentle teasing. Wasn’t that exactly what Danielle had accused her of being? By letting her father and Wayne run her life and others control her career? That hadn’t been a fun conversation. But it had been necessary. It had triggered the rapid departure of Wayne from her life and this journey of self-discovery. ‘Is that what I am?’

He stared at her—hard. ‘No. You’re brave and open and the least victim-like victim I’ve ever met.’

‘It’s because you’re with me. I’d be a basket case without you here.’

Two tiny lines appeared between his brows. ‘Sometimes we only find out what we’re capable of when we’re tested.’

‘Well, I think I’ve failed this test. Maybe I’ll do better next time.’

‘No.’ Immediate and fervent. ‘No next times. You don’t get this kind of luck twice.’

‘Luck?’ Was he crazy?

His face grew serious. He glanced at his watch. ‘You’ll see in a couple of hours. But I’ll be right here with you.’

A couple of hours felt like for ever. ‘Will the … what do you call it … getting me out …?’

‘Extraction.’

‘Will the extraction start as soon as the sun comes up?’

‘As soon as the sun crests the mountaintops, and assuming there’s no fog, yes.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘Hard to know. We have to stabilise your leg properly and make sure your shoulder is back in its socket before we shift you.’

She swallowed. Both those things sounded very unpleasant.

‘And then we’ll be pulling you out the back of the car.’

Her face must have paled, because he leaned forward and took her hand. ‘I’ll be with you every step of the way, Aimee. We’ll be tethered to each other at all times.’

‘The whole way?’

‘Until the top. Until the ambulance.’

She frowned at the finality of that statement. ‘Then what?’

He frowned. ‘Then that’s it. You go to hospital, then home where you belong.’

What if she didn’t belong anywhere? And why did she suddenly have the urge never to leave this shattered vehicle and the foil blanket and Sam’s gentle touch. ‘That’s it? I won’t see you again?’

He stared at her long and hard. ‘I’ll see how I go. Maybe I’ll drop your luggage back to you when the car’s towed up. You’ll have plenty to keep you busy before then.’

It was utterly insane how anxious she felt at the thought of that. A man she’d known less than a day. ‘I’d like to speak to you again. Under less extraordinary circumstances.’ When I’m showered and groomed and looking pretty. ‘To thank you.’

He nodded even more cautiously. ‘I’ll see how we go.’

That sounded very much like Wayne’s kind of I’ll see. Her father’s kind.

Translation: no.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘HOW many siblings do you have in total?’ Aimee asked after a while, when her inexplicable and irrational umbrage at his apparent brush off had subsided sufficiently. It wouldn’t hurt her to remember that this was business to Sam, no matter how chatty they got waiting for the sun to rise. Maybe rapport development was a whole semester unit over at Search and Rescue School. And maybe the two of them just had more rapport than most.

But it didn’t mean he’d want to take his work home with him—even metaphorically.

It just meant he was good at his job.

‘Seven,’ he murmured, leaning forward and blowing hot air into the cupped circle of her hand, still inside his. He pressed his lips against her fingertips for a tantalising, accidental moment. They were as soft and full as they looked. But warmer. And the sensation branded itself inside her sad, deluded mind.

Wayne had kissed her fingers many a time—and lots of other places besides—but while his lips had felt pleasant, even lovely at the beginning, they’d never snared her focus and dragged it by the throat the way the slightest touch from Sam did. She’d even started to wonder whether she was physically capable of a teeth-gnashing level of arousal, or whether ‘lovely’ was going to be her life-long personal best.

Please don’t let this be the drugs talking. Please. She wanted to think she was capable of a gut-curling attraction at least once in her life.

‘I’d definitely want more than one child,’ she said, then snapped herself to more attention when she heard her own dreamy tone. ‘Speaking as an only child, I mean. I’d want more.’

‘Your parents never did?’

‘Mum did, I think.’ But Lisbet Leigh hadn’t been the pants-wearer in their family. ‘Dad was content with just me.’

‘Why “just” you? I’m sure they are very proud of their only daughter.’

She let her head loll sideways on its neck brace. His way. ‘You really are an idealist, aren’t you?’

Was his total lack of offence at her ant-induced candour symbolic of his easygoing nature or of something more? Was Sam as engaged in her company as she was in his? Or was she just chasing rainbows? Maybe even painting them?

‘I’m sure my father will be eternally disappointed that his one-and-only progeny wasn’t really up to par,’ she continued.

‘Define par.’

She shrugged, and snuggled in tighter into her foil blanket. ‘You know … Grades. Sports. Achievements.’

‘You work for the country’s leading science and culture body. That’s quite an achievement.’

‘Right. And I had good grades. Not record-breaking, but steady.’

‘I can imagine.’ He smiled, and it reminded her a little bit of the way people smiled at precocious children. Or drunks. She didn’t like it.

‘You’re humouring me.’

‘I’m—’

Choosing your words very carefully …?

‘—just enjoying you.’ He almost fell over himself to correct himself. ‘Your company. Talking.’

Well … Awkward, much? ‘Any way, nothing short of medicine or law was ever going to satisfy my father. He’s had high expectations of me my whole life.’ And was constantly disappointed. Ironic, really, when she considered how his marriage had ended. Imploded. And how little he’d done to save it.

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